Google reveals the Nexus 7 and Android 4.3

Google has officially announced the Nexus 7 and Android 4.3 at their breakfast event today and the company also revealed some new apps and support they will be bringing to Android users.

They started with a few details on Google Play and Android, Sundar Pichai said tablets sales will surpass PC by the end of the year and almost half of all tablets are based on Android. The Google Play store currently has one million apps, revenue increased x2.5 per user this year and over 50 billion app downloads.

New Nexus 7

Starting with the Nexus 7, the new seven-inch tablet will come 50g lighter than the previous Nexus 7 and Google has chipped a few mm off the bezel and has made it a little thinner. The Nexus 7 will come with the highest tablet resolution yet, 1920 x 1200, “True HD” as Google has taken to calling it.

Inside the new Nexus 7 is a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro chip clocked at 1.5GHz, alongside 2GB of RAM. The tablet has dual-stereo Fraunhofer surround sound, 5MP rear camera and 1.2MP front camera. It comes with all the normal sensors and antennas, including dual-band WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and LTE.

Android 4.3

Android 4.3 was devoid of all battery life chat, even though early tests on leaked builds showed quadruple the battery life performance. The Android 4.3 talk started with restricted profiles, this is a bigger move to make sure kids cannot see in-app purchases and parents can now lock that down on a system level.

Google has added Bluetooth Smart, the big feature on this Bluetooth update is battery consumption when connected to other devices. OpenGL ES 3.0 support has been added for gaming developers and Google showed off the benefits with some new games.

DRM video encryption has been added for apps like Netflix, LoveFilm, Now TV and Hulu Plus. Netflix has already rolled out a new app for the Android store, available to pick up today.

Google also revealed a new Google Play Games app, similar to Game Center on iOS but without all the green felt. The app has achievements, social and public leaderboards, friends and multiplayer. With the Google Play Games SDK released at Google I/O, we thought it would only be a matter of time.

Google Textbooks is another new feature on the Google Play store, students can now buy or rent textbooks at 80% reductions. Google promises a big selection, from the five biggest textbook publishers.

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